Friday, February 14, 2014

No permission to 4G towers until radiation effects are studied: Mayor

Friday, 14 February 2014 / DNA

The BMC won't allow installation of 4G cell phone towers until a study regarding the effects of radiation emanating from the same on one's health is completed, mayor Sunil Prabhu said. Speaking to the media after a meeting of the group leaders in BMC, Prabhu said the civic body has been instructed to carry out a study by forming a committee of experts in this regard.

"The BMC has received applications seeking permission for installation 4G cell towers. However, we don't know up to what level the towers will emanate radiation. Hence, we have instructed the administration to find out the possible effects of the same on residents' health," he added.

The group leaders took the decision after the issue was mooted for discussion by Samajwadi Party group leader Rais Shaikh referring to a 70-foot-tall 4G tower on a private land in Chembur. BMC chief Sitaram Kunte has served a notice to the private player that has installed the tower, Prabhu said.

Many parents assume that if a wireless gadget is in the marketplace, it is safe for children. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. During the holiday season, I can only imagine how many children received a cell phone or tablet and how few families read the fine print; safety is not guaranteed and worse, Canada's Safety Code 6 is an antiquated regulation that lags behind Russia and China. We must do better.

Industry Canada Minister James Moore's recent announcement regarding improved notification of cell tower requests for towers less than 15 metres is a very important first step in improving the process to avoid the placement of cell towers where families can be harmed. This demonstrates that our government is listening.

Health Canada's Minister Ambrose now has a tremendous opportunity to join countries such as Belgium, France and Israel and put Canada back on the map for protecting its citizens' health.

Health Canada's Safety Code 6 governs the safety of cell phones, cell towers, Wi-Fi, smart meters and all other devices that now permeate every Canadian home. It impacts all of us, every day, and should protect us. But Safety Code 6 has not been significantly updated since the 1970s, long before Wi-Fi was invented or cell phones were sold.

Smart phone manufacturers Apple, Motorola, and Cisco all publish warnings in their manuals saying their phones, pads and Wi-Fi devices emit radiation shown to cause cancer in lab animals and to avoid over-exposure by holding it away from your body, or to keep a safe distance from "the lower abdomen of a teenage girl." Despite those stern warnings, the same companies are able to put such potentially harmful devices on store shelves in Canada. They are exercising a loophole in Health Canada's archaic safety standards for microwave devices that hasn't been updated in decades, since the first microwave, then the only emitting device in a Canadian home.

Belgium and France have new laws that don't allow manufacturers to market wireless devices to children because they are the most vulnerable. In Canada, we still force children in schools to be exposed to unmeasured levels of microwave radiation from cell phones and Wi-Fi.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that direct, long-term contact with wireless radiation is biologically harmful and can potentially have damaging health effects. In August 2011, shortly after the WHO classified radiofrequency radiation (the basis for all wireless devices) as possibly carcinogenic, Health Canada posted a warning that "encourages parents to reduce children's radiofrequency radiation (RF) exposure from cell phones since children are typically more sensitive to a variety of environmental agents". There hasn't been any major progress since then. Canadians are left to read the foreign press to learn about the universal dangers of wireless radiation, if they want to protect their families.

Fortunately the sea is beginning to change across Canada with local governments rejecting Health Canada's antiquated approach to this 21st century health crisis. What we've witnessed in the last six months is much like the national movement that began in Quebec in the early 1990s. Municipalities had rejected the federal government's promise that all regulated pesticides are safe, and began banning the use of weed spray in urban environments due to high cancer rates.

Municipalities once again are finding their strength in municipal law and proactively ensuring citizens are better protected.

On Dec. 16, 2013, the City of West Vancouver Council voted against a Rogers' application to install three new cell towers along Upper Levels highway. On the same day, the City of Guelph Council passed a motion asking Industry Canada to place a moratorium on the approval of any new radio communication facilities until such time as the review of Safety Code 6 has been finalized. On Dec. 18, 2013, the City of Toronto Council required new Rogers cell towers to comply with Toronto's Prudent Avoidance Policy which sets radiation levels 100 times safer than Health Canada's Safety Code 6. Toronto also updated its protocol for cell towers less than 15 metres tall stating that "City Council encourage Health Canada to actively review health evidence, including the most recent scientific research and studies, related to human exposure to radiofrequencies and to revise Safety Code 6 to meet international best practices, in consultation with the public and appropriate experts." The towns of Thorold and Oakville, Ont. have already passed similar motions.

What Canada needs is a national approach that acknowledges what independent scientists have conclusively shown: There is no guarantee that children can be exposed to any amount of wireless radiation for any amount of time without a biological impact.

Many of the scientists sounding the alarm bell are the same individuals who warned us about acid rain, second-hand smoke, DDT, asbestos and other widespread public health disasters. As harmful as these banned agents are, none of them were more widespread in our homes than wireless radiation is now. Canada should enter the 21st century of health care--the age of prevention--and prevent another disaster by updating Safety Code 6.

Frank Clegg has played a leadership role in the country's technology sector and in the broader Canadian community for many years. Mr. Clegg, former Microsoft Canada president, is now the volunteer CEO of Canadians for Safe Technology (C4ST), a national, not-for-profit, volunteer-based coalition of parents, citizens and experts.

Chris Dag/Flickr

The Los Angeles Unified School District's board is scheduled to green light $66 million in Wi-Fi upgrades Tuesday, bringing the total reported costs of wifi upgrades needed for its 1:1 iPad proposal to $795 million.

With that, iPad and wifi costs together would exceed $1.3 billion if the program is expanded to all district schools.

Officials did not take into account which schools were Wi-Fi ready at the start of the iPad program, so thousands of iPads went to schools that weren't equipped to get them online.

District officials have been scrambling this year to schedule upgrades. At a committee meeting last week, they reported 225 school sites now have enough bandwidth for all students to have iPads. The remaining 524 still aren't Wi-Fi ready.

"We can't just go to Best Buy and buy a few things off the shelf and put them in our classroom," said Ron Chandler, L.A. Unified's chief information officer. "This would rival a Southwest airlines. This would rival an OfficeMax. You got to think about something like that when you think about the size of this organization from a technology perspective."

Chandler said upgrades will take another year and half.

KPCC reported in December that Wi-Fi expansion would push up the cost of the iPad program — and that some of those costs were not included in L.A. Unified reports on its cost.

Much of the expense is laying wire to route up from the street grid, into a central wire closet and out to rooms. The wire is built to last.

The district's current estimate of $795 million for Wi-Fi upgrades, translates into $40 per student every year for the next 30 years based on current enrollment. Not included in that number are interest on the school bonds used to pay for the upgrades, network maintenance and costs associated with replacing tablets at the end of their life cycles — about four years.

The $66 million before the school board Tuesday will go to begin construction at 66 sites, and enhance 229 earlier site upgrades with "scalable fiber" run in from the street for greater bandwidth:

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About Me

While I have always been extremely health conscious and am presently in excellent health, I did become temporarily out-of-commission (i.e. I was really sick) in 2005 with a number of at the time unexplainable symptoms. I was quite puzzled at the time because I had been eating mainly organically grown food, drinking spring water, doing Yoga every morning, and going to the gym several times a week. In other words, I was doing everything one is supposed to do to stay healthy. I was not supposed to get sick. It took me six months before discovering or even imagining the main source of the problem - which was in fact "overexposure to electromagnetic" - especially microwave - radiation. I was living within 200 meters of two cell phone towers at the time and within 500 meters of a 3rd one with numerous WiFi signals bleeding into my apartment from adjacent neighbors. I developed a host of symptoms, which are found in what has been misleadingly described as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) -- but much more accurately described as Radio Wave or Microwave Sickness. Large numbers of people in the USA suddenly started getting sick in 1984...